Old Tech thread

mosaix said:
I suppose the props department had it donated when the BBC scrapped a 200 and didn't have any idea which way was 'up' - always a problem in space.
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Or, they just thought no one would notice. How many people would have ever seen one?

The Death Star control panel used to destroy Alderaan, including the lighted switches and that lever that is pulled are, I was told on good authority, TV studio gallery desk controls for lighting and vision control, and for fading or mixing between cameras. I used to know someone who trained new cameramen there, and I visited the BBC studios at White City, London with him in the mid-1980's. It did look the same to me.

Here is the Star Wars sequence:


And here is a photo of a similar, but smaller mixing desk, in another but very similar BBC studio taken in 1981, from this website: history of television studios in London

ap gallery photo.jpg
 
Now I think about it, the reason I could never take Blake's 7 seriously was that part of the controls of the spaceship was the keyboard of an NCR Class 32 accounting machine.

Being able to identify NCR equipment nearly got me into serious trouble once. Whilst I was out of the house one day in 1982 two detectives called and asked Mrs Mosaix if she owned a red Citroen 2CV - she did. They asked if she was driving it in Norfolk in September - "No but My husband was."

To explain why these two were so excited by her answer was that they had been given the task of interviewing every red 2CV owner in Shropshire and asking if it had been driven in Norfolk in September. They'd been doing this every day for three weeks and this was the first positive response they'd had.

I shortly returned home and the conversation went:

Detective: "Mr Mosaix we going to read you a statement of facts and then ask you some questions. During the evening of the sixth of September 1982 a filling station on road xxxx was the subject of an armed robbery. At the time of the robbery, a passing motorist saw a Citroen 2CV parked on the forecourt. An NCR Garage Forecourt Cash Register...

Me (interrupting): "A Class 52..."

Detective (with a very cold stare): "...a Class 52 was stolen. The garage attendant was attacked and subsequently died in hospital."

You can imagine that they were particularly interested in my answers to their questions. It got quite uncomfortable for a while until Mrs Mosaix produced her diary and found that we'd gone to the theatre that night with some friends. They lived not far away and one detective went round to question them whilst the other stayed to 'keep us company'.

Our friends later told us that they had no idea why they were questioned about their whereabouts on sixth September and couldn't remember. The detective finally mentioned the theatre as a possibility and then it all fell into place for them.

I often wonder what would have happened if we'd just spent that evening in with no proof of my whereabouts.
 
I've always wondered what the two Death Star crew were doing standing on an open, unshielded balcony beside a small console, while enough energy to blow up a full-size planet went past them not 30 feet away!
 
But the notorious Shropshire Supportive Friends Mob never worked in Norfolk. Everyone knows that was the infamous Hereford Wives Crime Syndicate, and that they drove blue Renaults.

But to return to subject, maybe we should have a separate "spotting of old machines within fictional spacecraft control units" thread?
 
pyan said:
I've always wondered what the two Death Star crew were doing standing on an open, unshielded balcony beside a small console, while enough energy to blow up a full-size planet went past them not 30 feet away!
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Dammit. Are you saying the Empire didn't pay proper attention to health and safety?
 
Dave said:
But the notorious Shropshire Supportive Friends Mob never worked in Norfolk. Everyone knows that was the infamous Hereford Wives Crime Syndicate, and that they drove blue Renaults.

But to return to subject, maybe we should have a separate "spotting of old machines within fictional spacecraft control units" thread?
Click to expand...
Well it wasn’t an old machine but in an episode of Thunderbirds when the scene cut to a human hand turning a control it was obviously the knob from a gas cooker.
 
Mods: If this counts as political, please delete with extreme prejudice.

I read this and instantly thought of "Old Tech thread" which is sad, because I was sneaking into middle age when some of this stuff was still current...

www.bbc.co.uk

Brexit deal mentions Netscape browser and Mozilla Mail

Experts suggest officials saved time by copying and pasting text from old legislation.
www.bbc.co.uk
 
pyan said:
...each 'graphic location' took literally up to 2 minutes to load, line by line...
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I remember games like that, and I actually thought it was what the future looked like. "And you try and tell the young people of today that and they won't believe you!"

BTW I think I have actually become one of the four Yorkshiremen from that sketch now.
 
Ah the Spectrum, the joy of getting the volume just right on your cassette player to load a program. I even painted a line of tippex on mine so I could set it to the same volume everytime.
I remember explaining to some ‘youngsters’ about having to plug in an expansion pack to increase the ZX81 from 1K to 16K, they thought I was exaggerating, a cardboard box luxury!!!
 
For anybody who wants to experience what early 80's microcomputing was like, I can highly recommend this


I taught myself programming on a real one back then and, from a programming perspective, this facsimile is exactly like the real thing. The case is also very close to the original, and the keyboard is excellent and, again, very close to the original. I can't attest to the games experience as my interest was, and still is, from a programming perspective.
 
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